I live in a large dense urban area inside a swing state that voted blue so my local news site is a bit more diverse perhaps. Ugly it is for the most part but, there are both level headed lefties and righties (very few) that sometimes take up the fight on hate. Honestly I can’t spend any time there due to the over abundance of how you say “the right wingers screaming into the void”. Incoherent ramblings are just scary after a while.
Hate does seem to be a strong repeller or attracter in echo logic. We are attracted to those of like mind and repelled by those of unlike mind. BBs strength is opening multiple creative and interesting forums to create a bridges between the two.
Based on your previous comment and this one, it sounds like we’re neighbors. I live in Northern Virginia, and while the comments posted to the Washington Post website span the gamut, the place I was thinking of when I called news site comment sections cesspits is the comment section of WTOP radio. It’s just really awful. So bad that I don’t even bother looking. And even though the area went 85% for Clinton in the election, there’s definitely a very vocal conservative minority on the NoVa subreddit, though most of their most inflammatory comments get downvoted to invisibility. Maybe you live a little further out than I do. There’s definitely more latte shops around here than there are gun/bait shops.
[quote=“Akimbo_NOT, post:65, topic:92249”]
Where I have seen the least amount of echo chambering is on local news sites with open unmoderated comment boards.
[/quote]Have you been to the national ones? Because commenters on Fox News stories organize raids in CNN stories comments, and every popular national aggregate has a strong conservative echo chamber or best case people from either end of the spectrum with dedicated fact checkers calling them on it.
Local news might be different, but I would easily say /pol/ is much more of an echo chamber than BBS.
Echo chamber has always been a problem, that is people tend to group with like minded individuals. I am and have been for a long time basically right libertarian. I find this group to be open to other individuals and ideas, but the most people here are “progressive” (in the groups I frequent more like statist). That being said you allow people with other ideas and legitimate arguments into the conversation while eliminating trolls.
I have gone through Progressive nationalist, communist, religious conservative libertarian and anarchist web forums. The better ones take other ideas, but each has its problems with trolls and the balance between accepting other ideas and turning trolls to stone (by casting the light of day on them) is always difficult.
Each of these places has fundamental assumptions about humanity and like minded people tend to gather. If people do accept that there are differences in opinion and do not reject actual data based points by silencing them, then you are not in an echo chamber. If you reject actual data that does not agree with your world view, then you are in an echo chamber.
My opinion is this website is open and does a good job of removing trolls without compromising openness to new ideas and conflicting data.
